@deb922, I would be delighted to visit your house! I’m visiting YOU, not your furniture and decor. Our house is very lived-in. H isn’t neat, I have clutter. We do cook really good food, though!
I’m fundamentally an introvert who can turn on some extroversion for limited periods. I’m happy to spend hours in my sewing room/office/plant room (It’s a single 10x10 space). I’ve gotten more active at our synagogue the past couple years. That will probably continue even after my sentence (2nd term as president) is finished. Folks there have become good friends. It only took 25 years!
H doesn’t have friends outside work, except for a few of his HS friends who are now more my friends than his. I find this worrisome as H gets closer to retirement. He has no real hobbies and will be happy to sit in a recliner all day. No interest in picking up new activities.
No couple friends, no girls’ nights out, no real relationships with neighbors. We used to throw dinner parties pre-kids, but life got in the way and folks have moved on. I’m not sure either of us have the emotional energy to start over.
My biggest fears about getting older: 1) not being able to leave the house. My mom spent her last ten years being totally bedbound, and it absolutely terrifies me. 2) H has a hard time dealing with my medical stuff now and while I have two life-threatening issues, I still am active, involved and cognitively together. He won’t be able to handle me becoming medically dependent. The emotional part is too much for him.
I live alone, and I am always on the lookout for new friends. I’ve kept in touch with and socialize with people I used to work with, and I’ve been going almost every Saturday to a Spanish English language meetup at a bar in Sunset Park–a neighborhood divided into Latino avenues and immigrant Chinese avenues, with a big and beautiful park in between. Most of my new friends are under 40, but that makes it interesting–always fun to describe my baccalaureate years, 1966-71. Tonight’s meetup had one other white woman, two Chinese Americans who didn’t know each other before, and a guy from Colombia with a ph.d. in teaching español. All way younger than I am but I enjoyed my generous pour of vino from my pal Javier at the bar and had a lot of fun!
I am 74 and i love being old. I have finally figured out the ins and out of my life. I know who I am and who i was meant to be. I am healthy. I spend a lot of time alone, by choice. I have never been happier.
I once heard a talk aimed at folks in the investment field about their individual clients. In retirement, people go through the Go-Go Years, then the Slow-Go Years, and then the No-Go Years. I think this captures things pretty well. We’re not retiring if we aren’t forced to by mental of physical decline. We have done so much traveling over the years (decades as a global consultant with many millions of frequent flyer miles to be used on family vacations), ShawWife and I don’t feel a compelling need to do more travel and this was probably light year for us because we had only one trip outside North America as a couple (but we have been to the Canadian Rockies, San Francisco, NY area several times and one more before the end of the year), Charleston SC, Florida, France, Ontario at least once, Montreal once, Memphis, DC). In a normal year, we would probably have at least another trip to Italy. So no need to add more to the Go-Go. We have seen both sets of mothers hit Slow-Go. My mother then hit No-Go. She told me that was thrilled that her oldest grandchild was going to get married (he was the first of her grandchildren to get married) but that she did not think she could fly there (and indeed, she passed away a few months before his wedding). My MIL is in the last stages of Slow-Go. She is staying with us for a week before heading down to Florida for the winter, but said that Florida will probably be her only flying going forward.
Most of us are still in the Go-Go phase and many are not retired. I think hitting the Slow-Go and No-Go phases may feel less good for me. But who knows?
I think this framework is helpful… but I’m also cognizant of the data which shows that most retired people are shocked by their new standard of living. As a country we don’t save enough for retirement, and so someone who is planning on a Go-go retirement needs to consider the costs of maintaining even a modest No-Go lifestyle if medical needs intrude. Not the Shaw family; you guys have done the math and done the saving and investing.
But a lot of people assume they’ll be taking constant cruises and eating in five star restaurants, when the reality is that without aggressive saving, that type of retirement is tough to pull off. Not impossible- but tough.
Like @shawbridge and unlike him, we see ourselves in the first steps of retirement as we are retired now.
It’s worth remembering that retirement isn’t always your choice but a set of circumstances. Maybe a late in life downsize, maybe a turn in health. Maybe circumstances of caretaking.
We also see our parents go to the slow go and no go phase. And honestly the anger that accompanied that. You live your life thinking that you’ll be able to do all the things and then one day it hits you that you’re now unable to do almost anything.
My husband told my kids over thanksgiving that their grandparents are not able to entertain anymore and they are unable to travel either. My husband hasn’t said that to his mom, because it would cause unnecessary stress. And she would argue that of course she can travel 100 miles to our house. They can’t and that was a realization that my husband needed to make.
The kids are going to come to our house for a few days and stop by the grandparents for a few hours on their way home. Thankfully it’s on the way home. As some people know, we drove the in laws and my mom made the trek to our daughter’s local micro wedding. That will be the last trip the in laws will make and they are aware. Not happy but aware.
I am also aware that we will be in our mid 80’s when the yet to be born children of my youngest will graduate high school. That’s a sad reality.
There is quite an age gap between posters on this thread.
COVID put me on the NO-GO list and I am trying to make it back to the SLOW-GO list.
Some days I think about going back to school, then what job I might like, and am so tired after thinking about it that I go back to Netflix!
I am yielding to the extent that it is healthy but want to get back to several days of tai chi and at least one art class. It makes my kids happy when I am doing those, as a side benefit.
Our financial advisors introduced us to that phrasing, and it has resonated to us. It’s given the us desire to travel a lot now in our Go-Go years (with the assurances from FA that we can afford to do so, which I know is a blessing not available to most retirees).
Our go-go years were our 20s-40s. We are not more/less active now than we plan to be at 90 and see retirement as a steady-as-you-go proposition. How DH and I are living life today is how we both see it steadily going forward. If our parents are any example, we have health and longevity on both sides. His parents both turned 90 this year and took a trip to Egypt last fall. My parents both turn 89 next year, and my mom is still giving the occasional massage (sold her business a few years ago), sings in her church choir and is the pianist there. My dad still walks three miles a day, plays baseball with the old guys in his community, and (unfortunately) still climbs a ladder to trim his trees. I’m sure there are things they can’t do, but I don’t think any of those things are anything they want to do or miss, and their lives don’t look any different to me than they ever did.
Of course, an unforeseen health event could move us instantly from our normal life to a no-go life, no predicting that, but we built escalating healthcare costs into our retirement planning. What we didn’t do is plan to spend more in the earlier years than the later years. We planned for a consistent drawdown to zero, though we probably won’t get there. We simply want to maintain our current modest lifestyle into our 90s.
Yes, we took our folks on one of their last few trips and it was tough on them AND us! My sisters took them on a trip after us and dad told a sister it was “hell!”. It’s really challenging for folks with health challenges to be in different places — very disorienting. (My folks were in their late 80s/early 90s and both had varying amounts of dementia that fluctuated when we were traveling with them.)
My mom entered hit No-Go around 95 (maybe 94) and died three weeks shy of 98. At age 90, she was still flying from NJ to Memphis on her own but resigned from several board seats because she was not comfortable taking the train from NJ to NY.
My SIL wanted my 93 yo MIL to stay with her for part of the week she is in our area. But there house has one flight of stairs to get to the main floor and another flight of stairs to get to the bedrooms. After taking the stairs to the main floor once, she decided that she would have to remain at our house. Definitely Slow-Go and close to No-Go.
Most of ours also although we are trying to gear back up. Just have to travel when healthy. My kids have traveled quite a bit and while part of me is saying “save your money!” the other side is saying “go now while you can”. Life can throw you a loop.
My S and DIL are definitely go-go in their 30s. They are traveling the globe and loving it. They can travel light and also don’t need as much gear to be comfortable. They’re happy in hostels as well as 5* hotels and everything in between and can get amazing deals on travel and lodging. They also have friends they can stay with in some exotic locations. I’m happy for them but hope they start their family if they ever plan to—the clock is ticking as they are in late 30s now.
We spent our 20’s childless, working a lot and not having much money. By the time we had any money (in our 30’s and 40"s) it was tough to travel with jobs, kids (one of ours had multiple food allergies, mostly outgrown now) and families far away who wanted US to travel there and attend reunions. There was only so much PTO and money.
We are in our go-go years now (just decided 2 days ago to go to Hawaii with D,SIL and GD in March) , but it’s not the same for H and me. He is still struggling with back issues preventing him from walking much, so we have already discussed my traveling some trips without him. That was something I did not foresee this soon.
I have no idea how long we will live. Our parents all made it to mid 80’s (except MIL who was 91), but I’m not a big believer that genes are always your destiny. One of my siblings who led a very healthy lifestyle passed away from illness at 47. OTOH, none of the women in my mother’s family lived past their 40’s - until my mom (who was sickly her entire life) made it just shy of 85.
My kids don’t have much memory of my MIL/FIL. MIL died when S was 3 and D was 1. FIL passed away when they were 8 and 6. My folks on the other hand were around until they were in their 30s, so they got to know them better.